A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c17.40

c17.40

The hippocamps, tritons, centaurs, and other weird creatures, which certainly were borrowed from Western art, occur, as we have seen in Chapter II, at Bodh Gayā and other places in the sculptures of the Early Period (Figs. 34–8). It does not much matter whether we call them Hellenistic or Western Asiatic. Forms more or less similar recur at Mathurā and Amarāvatī and in Gandhāra (pp. 104, 125, 146). The strongly-marked muscles of some of the Gandhāra figures and the snake-tailed monsters suggest the notion that the sculptors of the north-west felt the influence of the vigorous Pergamene school. The Atlantes of Jamālgarai especially seem to be reminiscent of Pergamum; from the Buddhist point of view they may be regarded as Yakshas. A few of these Western Asiatic Hellenistic forms are shown together in Plate LXXXVIII, Figs. A, B. Atlantes occasionally occur in later Hindu art.³